Frequent visitors to The First 10,000 (both of you) have no doubt noticed that a chunk of the right-hand side of the blog was taken up by a series of advertising blocks that have been sitting vacant for the last few weeks. There were reasons for this.
For one thing, I was, and remain, ambivalent about having a blog that’s supported by commercial advertising, since having, say, Nikon as a sponsor could cause people to question my motivation and objectivity if I have something to say about their product.
For another, there was also no way to disable the advertising links. Since I didn’t want that space to go to waste, I’ve reached out to a handful of nonprofit organizations and charities whose work either intersects with, or is directly related to, photography. The space is a donation of sorts; it wasn’t paid for by the organizations, and so probably isn’t “advertising” as such. I simply wanted to draw attention to organizations that are doing good work, and I hope that you’ll visit their sites to find out what they’re all about.
From time to time, I’ll be “featuring” organizations, giving them a bit larger presence on the site, and telling you a bit more about them. You’ll find more information on this month’s featured organization, HeARTs Speak, next week, and in the near future, I hope to have a page assembled that brings attention to these organizations and the work they’re doing. In the meantime, visit, volunteer, and if you know of other organizations that cover similar ground, please contact me.
Special thanks to Amanda Shoemaker of ShutterMission, Kim Davidson of Idealist, Lisa Prince Fishler of HeARTs Speak, Burk Jackson of Creative Cares, and Tonee Lawrence of Operation: Love ReUnited for their assistance and kind permission to feature their organizations.